Vivendi Universal vs. News Corporation

timbo_red writes: "According to a BBC story, NDS, a company 80% owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is being sued by Canal+ for allegedly cracking their smart cards, which could have had a serious effect on ITV digital, the major UK competitor to Murdochs Sky digital in the UK pay TV market."

Comments

Re:"Huge sums"

[Zeinfeld]

So, according to the article, NDS spent "huge sums" cracking the codes. It seems to me, that if the codes were sound, it should have been mathematically impossible for them to crack it for any amount of money (short of an optical, or quantum computer, of course). And if they weren't, why did they need to spend so much money on it?

Actually this is not true when it comes to DRM measures. The problem here is that you are trying to keep information secret while sharing it with a few tens of millions of subscribers.

Ultimately any crypto scheme depends on the secrecy of a small number of keys. If a person reveals their key deliberately then anyone can read the information sent to them.

That said the Canal+ scheme does not have a great reputation for security. There are plenty of schemes that at least require the attackers to extract secret keys from smart cards. The satelite TV DRM problem is much easier than the DVD type problem. With a DVD player you can't issue a different key to each user and withdraw use rights on a per player basis. With satelite TV you can.

Jurisdiction overhaul

[mcrbids]

This case underscores the global nature of society now, an issue further underscored by the Internet itself.

Really and truly, the idea of "jurisdiction" when it comes to "e-anything" is almost incomprehensible. I publish a web page here in California about barbecues and possibly break Indian law. I publish a (perfectly legal in the US) pro-nazi page with swastikas and break German law if Germans ever (god forbid) look at it.

In this kind of environment, "legal" falls to the least common denominator, whatever's left when everything illegal everywhere is removed. Not much of an argument for "free speech" since anything on the 'net is merely communication, after all.

Remember Dimitri?

At issue is that there is no international law (that the US will respect, anyway) and as a result of this deficiency, we see all kinds of craziness.

It's going to get worse before it gets better.(sigh)